Handle With Care
by MarqueeMoonGirl
Summary: A series of drabbles about Murdoc and Noodle's relationship on and off of Plastic Beach. Murdoc/Noodle.
1. Part One

_**Handle With Care**_

_By MarqueeMoonGirl_

**part ONE**

**I. Without Love – Nick Lowe**

Murdoc Niccals was a bastard. Almost everyone he'd come in contact with since his childhood had told him so repeatedly, and they were almost always right. When it came right down to it, he was proud to be a bastard. You got what you wanted, possibly at the expense of others' feelings, but you didn't care. You were a bastard, after all. If anyone didn't like it, they could fuck off.

**II. Shining Star – Earth, Wind, and Fire**

Noodle was the sole, shining exception. Her presence in his life was sometimes the only thing that had kept him going. He wasn't quite aware how much he needed her wide smile, her gentle encouragement, or the occasional swift kick to the butt when he was being too much of an ass until she had unexpectedly vanished from his life, taking the modicum of joy he got out of life with her.

Worst of all, it had been his own bloody fault. The demons had been after him, and had only taken Noodle because she'd happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That hurt worst of all.

**III. Robot Rock – Daft Punk**

To the press Murdoc had boasted that he'd built the Cyborg to replace the original Noodle on the new album. (And he had a lot of material to use on the album. Music was how he mourned.) In reality Cyborg had been his poor man's replacement, built out of loneliness, guilt, and despair during a drunken binge. Her ability to mimic the real Noodle's guitar playing was an added bonus. He'd put too much of himself into the Cyborg's programming. The smug look on her face after she'd been activated was proof enough of that. She may've looked like Noodle and sounded like Noodle when her vocal chords were working, (most of the time they weren't) but she was not the Noodle he'd known.

In a strange way, the Cyborg was like the daughter he'd never had; a twisted, fractured version of himself and Noodle that was neither entirely him or her. Noodle smiled, Murdoc scowled, Cyborg smirked.

**IV. Melancholy Soldiers – The Skids**

When Murdoc had first spotted a video posted online of a woman with purple hair calmly sitting in a luxury ocean liner's stateroom, it had been during a drinking binge that had gone on for days and intially he thought he'd been hallucinating Noodle from the rum. It wouldn't have been the first time – she had been a popular hallucination of his over the four years since her disappearance/abduction. But once he began to sober up, and the slender woman with purple hair remained in the video no matter how many times he played it, he realized it was really her, alive and free from Hell.

And she was coming to Plastic Beach. To him.

The next day, a check of the news websites showed him a photograph of the same ocean-liner Noodle had been on, decimated to floating debris after a pirate attack. A search of the ocean surrounding Plastic Beach ended in failure and he returned to Plastic Beach, scowling and annoyed. 2D and the cyborg had slipped away from him silently once they'd gotten out of the submarine, realizing that it might be a good idea to stay out of Murdoc's way for the foreseeable future.

**V. Always The Sun – The Stranglers**

Bits of the ocean-liner and a crashed pirate jet began to wash ashore three days later. No sign of Noodle or Russel. Murdoc was beginning to think they'd abandoned him and headed back to civilization, to move on with their lives without Gorillaz. Both of them certainly had good reason to – Russel wouldn't have been at all happy about being replaced with a drum machine, and Satan only knew what Noodle would think of her cyborg replica. Nothing good, probably.

**VI. Stacked Crooked– The New Pornographers**

A few crates of alcohol had washed ashore along with the ocean-liner debris, discovered by the cyborg during an early morning patrol of the island. She had no use for alcohol and had silently turned it over to Murdoc, who was attempting to get as drunk as humanly possible off of sixty-four bottles of rum and whiskey. He drank the half of the alcohol straight from the bottle, only stopping once he passed out.

When he awoke, his brain pounding against his skull like it was trying to escape, he moaned, rolled over onto his stomach, and clawed through the air, fumbling for the bucket that the android had started leaving next to his bed after she had found him one morning asleep in a puddle of vomit. He dry-heaved over the bucket for a moment.

"Murdoc."

He twisted his head towards the voice, feeling his stomach tighten unpleasantly. A slender Japanese woman with purple hair and green eyes was sitting on his bed, half of her face covered in bruises.

For a minute, Murdoc couldn't speak. His head was still throbbing from his hangover, and if it really was Noodle, this was not how he'd imagine their reunion would go. He'd give anything to edit the hangover and vomit bucket out of his memory. "Are you real?" he finally croaked out, his throat dry.

The woman blinked in confusion. "Why wouldn't I be?" she said with a thick Japanese accent. He lurched towards her, and she helped him unsteadily to his feet.

"It's been a long time, love, and I've been drunk for most of it. I see weird things when I'm fallin' down drunk. Flying elephants, possessed cupboards, pretty girls..." He touched her unblemished cheek, to reassure himself that Noodle was real. "Cripes, Noodle, I've missed you." She grasped his hand with hers, still covered in soft white leather gloves.

She smiled coyly and leaned into his touch, squeezing his hand. "I have missed you too, Murdoc."

To Murdoc, the kiss on his cheek she gave him was an unexpected but welcome surprise, even after Noodle laughed and said that he tasted like pickled vinegar and rum.

The door to Murdoc's bedroom swung open, and Noodle's laughter died in her throat as she saw the cyborg replica of herself, dressed in a midriff-baring vest and hotpants, standing in the hall.

_'Oh, bloody 'ell.'_

**END: part ONE**

**MarqueeMoonGirl SEZ: **I thought I'd try something different with this one and do a story in short chunks. Originally, it was supposed to be 'write a drabble during a song about your favorite pairing' but I cheated (a lot) and incorporated snippets of things that I've been writing over the summer that didn't go anywhere and strung together into a loose narrative, which is why some of them are longer then others. If anyone's curious, the songs are listed above their respective drabbles.

Thank you for reading!


	2. Part Two

_**Handle With Care**_

_By MarqueeMoonGirl_

**part TWO**

**VII. Human Rocket – DEVO**

Noodle drew a submachine gun and aimed it at the cyborg, shouting "DEMON!" at the top of her lungs. Before Noodle could pull the trigger, the cyborg's jaw seemed to unhinge as the barrel of a shotgun quickly extended from her throat, pointed straight at the living Noodle's chest. Cyborg was reacting exactly the way Murdoc had programmed her to respond to strangers with weapons drawn in his bedroom, and right now he was kicking himself for it.

"Stop! Don't shoot her, Cyborg!" he shouted, trying to wedge his body between the two Noodles before they could fire at each other. The shotgun barrel quickly slid back into the cyborg's throat, and her jaw swung shut with an audible clank.

Noodle still had her submachine gun pointed at the Cyborg but it trembled in her hands.

**VIII. Up In Heaven (Not Only Here) – The Clash**

"What is she?" Noodle said after a moment of terse silence, her voice quavering.

"A cyborg," said Murdoc, not about to enjoy the next several minutes. "I made her," he mumbled, looking out the porthole instead of meeting her eyes. "Needed the protection."

"You built a cyborg version of me?" Noodle said, her voice now carefully even. "When you thought I wasn't coming back? Was that when you built it?"

"Noodle, I spent half a year down there," Murdoc protested, turning around her face her. "I combed through as much of it as I could looking for you 'fore they gave me the boot. Being chased out of the gates of Hell without you was not exactly one of my proudest moments, love."

"But yo-" Noodle paused, watching as the Cyborg suddenly walked into the bedroom until she was just inches away from the living girl. For a moment, neither of them moved.

**I****X. I Robot – The Alan Parsons Project**

"Noodle," the cyborg's tinny speaker said, scratchy but stil audible. It grinned, showing nothing but a disturbing amount of teeth. Nothing else on its face moved. "It is very nice to meet you. Mr. Murdoc and 2D have told me a lot about you."

"Ah," Noodle said, clearly unsure how to respond. Horror at the cyborg existing at all was grappling with her sudden desire to not hurt the cyborg's feelings, assuming it had any to hurt. It wasn't the Cyborg's fault that it existed. "It is an...unexpected surprise to meet you, um, Cyborg?"

The Cyborg Noodle nodded, its mouth still frozen in the toothy grin. "Come, I will show you my collection of guitars!" the cyborg buzzed, grabbing Noodle's hands and dragging her down to the music room, leaving Murdoc standing in his bedroom alone, slightly confused, and still hungover.

**X. I Ain't Got No Heart – Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention**

Noodle had been afraid for a moment that Cyborg's collection of guitars would in reality be the guitars she'd left at Kong. It would be just like Murdoc to let someone else play her guitars – he knew that the thought of someone besides her touching even one string of her beloved yellow Les Paul was tantamount to asking her to pummel them into the wall – but when the Cyborg brought her to the new music room, she grabbed a shiny black Fender Starcaster that Noodle had never seen before. Cyborg plucked a note on the unamplified guitar, grinned widely, and then held it out to her.

Noodle stared at it for a minute before taking the Starcaster into her hands. For it's age, it had been kept in very nice condition. If it wasn't for a number of small scratches around the f-holes and fretboard, she would've thought it hadn't been played at all during the thirty years since it had been made.

"It's very nice," she said politely to the Cyborg, handing her back the guitar.

"Mr. Murdoc gave it to me," Cyborg chirped, running a finger down the lacquered wood. "As soon as he turned me on for the first time, he handed me this guitar and an AK-47 and told me to use both of them well." The cyborg tilted her head and grinned again, an impsih look on her face. "He would talk to me as if I was you before I could speak back. He told many things."

**XI. We Used To Wait – Arcade Fire**

Noodle was only half-listening to the Cyborg, scanning the room for any sign of her yellow Les Paul. In addition to the Cyborg's Starcaster and dark blue Telecaster, she saw 2D's melodica on top of the old Donkamatic synthesizer, Murdoc's faded red and black Flying V guitar in a stand near the mixing board, and even Russel's old drum kit sitting forgotten in the corner. Her Les Paul was nowhere in sight. That troubled her more then it probably should've.

The Cyborg put the Starcaster back on its stand just as a loud explosion of water sounded outside. With a polite 'excuse me', the Cyborg yanked a grenade free from her vest and crept to one of the open windows.

Noodle grabbed the Cyborg's arms, preventing her from pulling the grenade's pin. "No, no, that is Russel!"

Cyborg gave her a blank stare. "Who?"

A large whale went flying past the window just as Russel rose from the sea, dwarfing the white building on Plastic Beach.

Both Noodles heard a high-pitched scream from upstairs, followed by another, higher, scream from below.

**XII. Mermaid Smiled – XTC**

It was lonely all alone in his room, no doubt about it, although the walking weapons arsenal/Noodle robot was nice company when she dropped by his room to either keep him company or to spy on him for Murdoc, it was hard to tell. But it wasn't the loneliness that got to him down here, it was the enormous creature that Murdoc had somehow gotten to stand guard outside his window. For days it would stare at him, always watching, never leaving. He'd tried to escape once, when the Cyborg had left his door unlocked, but the whale had smashed his little boat to pieces before he'd even gotten fifty yards out to sea.

When the whale was violently grabbed by a large human hand and flung out of the water, 2D sprang to his feet and cheered.

He stopped cheering when the hand smashed through the wall and grabbed him as water quickly filled his room.

**END: part TWO**


End file.
